Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor

by Richard Tongue

   “I know what you mean,” Duggan said from across the room. “I keep looking up, waiting for the Sergeant to yell at me for something, or for one of my squad buddies to...ah, it’s silly, isn’t it. I wish they’d left those crewmen here.”

   “No,” Cooper said, shaking his head. “We’re going to need the space when we get our people back.”

   “Gabe,” Orlowski said, quietly, “That isn’t going to happen. If they aren’t dead, the Cabal has them, and I don’t see them giving them up. Short of being captured by them ourselves, we aren’t ever going to see them again.” He glanced across at Duggan, who looked down at the deck, “You’re going to have to get used to that idea.”

   Cooper jumped off the bunk and looked at his friend, “I don’t think I can.” Sighing, he continued, “I’m going for a walk. I think I need to be alone for a little while.”

   Orlowski grabbed his sleeve as he walked past. “If you need anything, call.”

   “Thanks, buddy.” He walked out of the empty barracks, hearing muttered conversations – no doubt relating to his current mental equilibrium – behind him, and out into the corridor. A part of him longed to enlist his friends, to get their help in his investigation, but he knew the risk he was running. For all the Captain had said, there was only so much he could do to protect him. For all he knew, an assassin already had a bullet with his name on it.

   He turned around a corner, his feet taking him in a random direction. At this point, he might as well; he didn’t have any idea where to start looking. The suspect had to be someone with engineering experience, but that didn’t narrow it down enough. Almost certainly it was one of the crewmen from Hercules, but even that wasn’t necessarily so; before leaving Mariner Station, they’d taken a lot of new crewmen on board. Himself included, he mused. Perhaps he was the assassin.

   Explosives were the key. As he had left, Quinn had slipped him an inventory check, and it had revealed that nothing was missing from the ship’s stores. Not that Alamo routinely carried that sort of equipment on board, anyway. Which meant it had to have been manufactured. With a smile, he turned to the nearest elevator and stabbed a button for Fabricator Control.

   Next to the reactor, the ship’s fabricators were the heart of Alamo. Without them to provide spares and replacement, the ship would be a tumbling ruin in a matter of weeks. Much of the interior of the ship was devoted to the material tanks used to feed them. The elevator doors slid open, and he stepped out onto the deck, almost walking into a red-faced Petty Officer.

   “Can I help you?” the man sneered, and Cooper took a step to the side, allowing the elevator to close.

   “I was wondering if there is any spare capacity in the fabricators. There are a few bits of equipment I could do with.”

   “Ha,” the man snorted. “You’ve got to be joking. We’re running the machines around the clock to keep up with Quinn’s repair schedule. I haven’t even had a chance to service these babies in a week.”

   “No capacity at all?”

   “I told you, Corporal, not a thing. If you have something you need that badly, you’re going to have to push it in through channels. Though the waiting list is pretty damn long, so I would prepare to be disappointed.”

   “I see. Sorry to bother you.” It was a nice theory, even if it went nowhere.

   “That’s fine, I’ve got nothing else better to do,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Look, if you see anyone else roaming about with a burning desire to jump the gun on the fabrication schedule, tell them to find another hobby.”

   “I’m not the first?”

   “Sub-Lieutenant Matsumoto was down here an hour ago, asking a lot of stupid questions about processing.”

   “What sort of questions?”

   “Do I look like a tour guide?”

   Leaning forward, Cooper pressed, “What sort of questions?”

   “Something about chemical composition. I told her to look in the ship’s database; I’m just a technician. One who has to get back to work if you ever want this ship to be fixed.”

   “Thanks,” Cooper replied, turning back into the elevator. He paused for a moment before selecting a destination, then glanced down at his watch. Alpha Watch should just be coming on shift; Matsumoto would be settling into her station right now for the next eight hours. It seemed unlikely that Marshall had put her on the same task as he, though not impossible – two people working on the job would be better than one. But why would she not be invited to the meeting?

   He tapped a button for the enlisted mess, and pulled a datapad out of a pocket, calling up a roster of the ship’s company. Tapping in a few parameters relating to known clearance and expertise didn’t take long, but didn’t prove very fruitful, either. More than a dozen names remained who had the knowledge and the means to build such an explosive. He certainly didn’t.

   A thought crossed his mind, and he scanned down the work roster for the fabricators; that Petty Officer wasn’t exaggerating. According to the records, he’d been working for thirteen hours already, his signature attached to every requisition. No chance that he was the suspect, then.

   The doors slid open, and he stepped out into a mostly-empty room; a few technicians were snatching late breakfast snacks from the counters, waiting around impatiently for their food to be prepared. One of them snatched their sandwich from the dispenser, took a bite, and slammed it back onto the counter.

   “What the hell is this? It tastes like metal,” he yelled.

   “Grin and bear it, Hank. My cereal was the same this morning. Must be something wrong with the food fabricators.”

   Cooper’s eyes widened. The main construction fabricators weren’t the only ones on the ship. He didn’t think for a moment that someone would have been able to access the combat fabricators, devoted to the near-instant manufacture of missiles – they were the closest-monitored piece of equipment on Alamo. The food fabricators, on the other hand, were a different story.

   Waiting for the disgusted group to return to their duty stations, he quietly stepped through a door marked ‘Authorized Personnel’, and heard a siren go off; evidently someone was serious about the security in here. Taking a few seconds to look around, he raced over to the computer and began to type – and mercifully, whoever had used it last was still logged in. Lousy security practice, but he quickly began to download the logs of recent activity into his datapad, stepping back out into the mess area in time to see his new commanding officer, Lieutenant-Major Diego, walk in, gun in his hand.

   “What the hell is this, Cooper?” Diego said.

   “Food systems seem to be out of whack, boss. I was trying to find someone to fix it.”

   “So you violate a restricted area?”

   “It’s hardly a critical system, sir.”

   With a sigh, Diego pulled out a communicator, “Diego to McGuire. It’s nothing to worry about, just a mix-up. Cancel alert.”

   “How did you get here so quickly, anyway?”

   “Actually, I was coming by to get a sandwich. Is it that bad?”

   “Everything tastes of metal.”

   “Ugh.” He walked over to the terminal. “I’m too hungry to care. Fancy taking a risk with something?”

   “I think I’ll just have a drink.” Diego walked over to the terminal, punched in for some sort of curry, laden with heavy spices, and headed over to a table, snatching a fork from the counter on his way. He took a careful bite, then nodded.

   “This tastes fine. Want to try some?”

   “Curry for breakfast is a bit beyond me, sir.”

   “After you’ve been in the service for a while, food is fuel. It doesn’t matter when you it eat, just that you do. Besides, all we had on Discovery were the same ten meals over and over. Early-generation fabricator. You think this tastes bad?”

   Hesitantly, Cooper sat down at the table. A thought crossed his mind, “McGuire sitting in for Matsumoto tod
ay?”

   Diego shrugged, “No idea. Maybe she’s busy, or its some sort of training program.” He took another bite, then dropped his fork down to his plate. “I wanted to talk to you, anyway.”

   “Sir?”

   “You blame yourself. For the loss of your platoon.”

   “I was there, I lived, they didn’t. This isn’t survivors’ guilt, sir, and I assure you that I am capable of handling all of this.”

   “But you want revenge on the Cabal.” It was a statement, not a question.

   “Of course I do. I also know that my personal feelings cannot be a part of our mission, and I am willing to do whatever is necessary. However, I will tell you – as I have told the Captain – that if there is any opportunity to recover those of my comrades who were captured, I will take it, no matter what the risk.”

   “I’ll be right there alongside you, Cooper. I assure you of that. There’s one more thing, though. Perhaps more important. What do you think about me?” He smiled, taking another mouthful of curry. “You can speak quite freely.”

   “I don’t know you well enough to have an opinion of you, Major. I do wonder whether you will be able to lead men in the field should it come to it.”

   “That’s your job, Cooper, and we both know it. I’m doing this job to get reacquainted with military life, to provide tactical advice, and to give you backup wherever necessary. I am fully aware of my limitations, and though I certainly intend to strive to overcome them, I also will tell you know that as far as I am concerned, you remain operational commander.” With another grin, he continued, “You certainly have my full confidence in that department. I’ve seen some of the films of you at work.”

   Frowning, the Corporal replied, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

   “I’m not your usual officer.” With a chuckle, he continued, “Besides, I’ve been there. Battle of Barnard’s Star, I was a raw Third Lieutenant, but I was the man on the spot. Captain Graham told me that the half-platoon was mine to lead. Well, the Colonel decided to overrule me, gave orders down to single troopers over the tacnet.”

   “I bet that was fun.”

   “While he was having a grand time reliving the days when he had a single bar, he was messing up the grand battle. We ended up retreating.” He paused, his face dark, “Lost a lot of good men that day. Three days later we went back and finished the job, with Brigadier Kutuzov in command instead. Now there was a tactician. Best I ever saw.” He chuckled, then said, “Last time I heard about it, Miller was commanding a garrison all the way out at Triton.”

   “That was back at the start of the war, wasn’t it?”

   “First of the big interstellar operations, and damn near the last. Colonel Miller taught me a very important lesson that day, though I doubt he meant to – if you give a subordinate authority, you don’t take it back without a damn good reason, and you focus on the level of the battle that you are responsible for.”

   “I’ll remember that, sir.”

   With another chuckle, he said, “Thank you for humoring an old man, Cooper. It’s good to be able to tell these stories to a new audience. I might even bore you to death with a few more some time, when we can find a decent bar.”

   Nodding, Cooper said, “I’ll look forward to that, sir.”

   “Anyway, you run along. And stop going into secured areas, Corporal. Next time it might not be me who gets here first.”

   “Yes, sir.” Cooper rose, saluted, and left the Major to his unappealing brunch. He walked out of the room, pulling out his datapad, running through the list of names on the docket. It was then that he noticed the identity he had used to access the files, the last user to use that terminal. Sub-Lieutenant Matsumoto.

  Chapter 5

   Generally, Marshall always made sure that he was the first in a staff meeting; he liked to read his officers as they walked into the room, try and determine the tone of the discussion. There was no question of running the ship by consensus, he was in command and comfortable with that, but it was always best to try and make his officers enthusiastic, get them behind whatever plans he made, the orders he gave.

   This time was different. He had deliberately loitered for a moment, waiting around a turn in the corridor before entering the briefing room. For the first time, he was going to be lying to his officers, and he didn’t much care for the idea. Sometimes he’d been forced to leave information back, of course, that was a part of the game at times – not everyone had the highest level of security clearance. This, on the other hand, was all his decision, all his responsibility.

   For years, he had craved an independent, deep-space command. The opportunity to command a ship, a mission, without interference from anyone. Now that he had it, it was proving to be a double-edged sword. He could do what he thought was necessary, but there was nothing to fall back on – other than some vague sailing instructions that were increasingly out of date as he struggled to improvise a way home.

   Caine was quite right, of course. Somewhere inside, he had given up on the idea of getting home, was beginning to think instead of working to mitigate the failure of his mission, his inability to get the information that Alamo carried home, data that could change the balance of power across interstellar space once Triplanetary analysts could get their hands on it. If there was any potential chance to get back to Mars, he had to take it.

   Taking a deep breath, he walked around the corridor and into the briefing room. A torrent of conversation stopped as he entered, and the assembled officers rose, stood to attention, and saluted. Returning the salute, he gestured for everyone – at least, everyone who could – to take their seats.

   He’d never known the room this crowded before. His father was sitting on the opposite side of the table, flanked by Diego, Lane and Bailey; whilst they were all Alamo crewmembers now, they still seemed to be a little knot of Hercules at the other end of the room, independent from the rest. Zebrova and Caine were on his left; his astrogator, Mulenga and Quinn on his right. Standing at the side of the room were Tyler, Kibaki and Steele; all the off-duty watch officers were here at his order.

   “Good morning, everyone. I’ll try to keep this as short as possible, I know there is a lot going on. First of all, Mr. Mulenga, do you want to provide a few words about our current location?”

   Nodding, the dark-skinned astrogator tapped a button, and a series of holodisplays appeared, showing Gliese 479, their current location, a trio of planets spinning around it. Alamo’s image flashed on the screen, on a slow transit between hendecaspace points.

   “We picked this system in a bit of a hurry, but so far it has been exactly as advertised. No populations, no bases, just some automated beacons around the innermost planet.”

   “What are the beacons for?” Lane interrupted.

   Frowning, Mulenga turned to her and replied, “Monitoring the system. We’ve done some light hacking – Lieutenant Bailey will be able to tell you more about that – but there really isn’t anything much to say. My presumption is that we will find similar devices in other Cabal-controlled systems.” He turned back to Marshall. “There is no evidence of any activity in this system, sir. I think we’ve made a clean getaway.”

   “Good,” he replied, looking around the room. “No doubt you are all wondering about our next move. We have enough fuel to jump to one more system, so this is obviously critical.”

   Lane spoke up again, “I suggest we turn back, return to the fueling station, and take the fuel we need.”

   “Into the arms of a task force?” Caine said, shaking her head. “That’s crazy.”

   “That task force won’t be there any more,” she replied, smiling. “They’ll be out, looking for us. We might be able to get back our people, and we know all the fuel we need is present. It’s a bold move, but not as high-risk as it sounds.”

   Unbelievably, there were a few nods – Bailey seemed to be in agreement, as did Steele; the later had a perso
nal interest in going back. There was no doubt that her lover was dead, killed in the boarding action at the fueling station – but in the back of her mind, there must remain some sort of chance, no matter how slight.

   “We aren’t going back,” Marshall said.

   “It is the fastest way home,” Lane pressed, “and the one with the greatest chance of success.” Waving at the holodisplay, she continued, “We could fly around deep space for months, hiding and hoping, trying to improvise a way home. This is the sure bet.”

   Bailey added, “I suspect it likely that Hercules – assuming, of course, that it was captured and not destroyed – might also be there. We have to take that into consideration.”

   “All that we will find if we turn back is an ambush,” Zebrova said. “We only just escaped that trap by the skin of our teeth once. I’m not eager to step back into it again.”

   “There is no question,” Marshall said, “that we are going to have to take the long way home. As tempting as it sounds to proceed directly back to Spitfire, we can’t consider it with our fuel levels this low. We’d never make it, even if we could get past whatever sort of blockade they have established.”

   “So what’s the solution, then?” Lane said. “What have you got in mind.”

   “Battlecruiser tactics,” his father said, nodding. “Right?”

   “Exactly. We need to hit transports, freighters, small installations, and get our fuel from there. We managed to save all of our refueling shuttles, which is a significant advantage, and the ship is fully operational.”

   Diego sighed, “With only five espatiers, that’s going to be a problem. I can’t guarantee securing hostile targets, Captain.”

   “We’ve got six missile tubes,” Caine said. “And all we need to take is fuel. You think some civilian freighter captain is going to risk being blown to atoms for that? We can leave cargo intact…”

   “What’s more,” Marshall said, “I intend to provide payment for everything we take.”

   “Payment?” Steele said. “To them?”